A California high school girl has been caught on video beating up a male student before fleeing down the street as a teacher chases her.

The school lunch brawl occurred on campus at Sonoma Valley High School last Thursday, but the footage was posted to Facebook at the weekend. By Tuesday it had been viewed 12 million times.

According to students, both teens are freshmen. While the boy goes to Sonoma Valley, the girl is believed to attend Creekside High School, another school on the same campus.

The video shows the girl pushing the boy to the ground, and then kneeing him twice in the face, before running away. As if aware of the cell phones recording her, the girl does well to cover her face as she flees.

Suddenly a teacher arrives at the scene and be heard yelling: 'Get that girl! Right now! Who is that girl?'

The girl then takes off through the parking lot and down the street, as the teacher appears to give up chasing her. Sonoma Valley High School Principal Kathleen Hawing confirmed the video was shot on her campus, however said the police were not called.

'We never condone violence in any shape or form,' Hawing told The Sonoma News.

'People are commenting on Facebook without any knowledge of the incident, and it's just unfortunate that those are the things we deal with.'

'We are working with our community, our students to talk about social responsibility, digital citizenship, and to understand the effects of social media.'The school contacted Facebook and asked to have the video taken down.

However the school told CBS SF Bay Area that Facebook declined saying that the video does not violate its community standards.

Creekside High School principal Sydney Smith told the network: 'As far as I know there are not any major issues between our two schools, and we're not in competition.'

Smith said 'the lesson to come out of this is to think twice, and if it's not nice, don't post it'.